A forgettable week for Fantasy Football Robot which managed only 15% precision in its predictions. Here’s a summary:
Goalies, No goalie predicted! The highest probability goalie was Mignolet with a 41% chance of scoring 6+ points, but no goalie had a probability that exceeded 50%.
Defenders, 0 players correct out of 11, 0% precision. A disaster. FFR predicted clean sheets for Chelsea (at Stoke), Arsenal (hosting Everton) and West Brom (hosting Norwich). Chelsea laboured to a win but conceded twice; Arsenal conceded late on after good Everton pressure; and West Brom had a shocker at home to a Norwich side in not much form.
Midfielders, 1 player correct out 6, 17% precision. Ozil correct; Lampard, Toure, Ramsey, Gerrard and Hazard wrong. Not a good week for the big names in midfield!
Forwards, 2 players correct of 3, 67% precision. Suarez and Aguero correct again. Rooney was suspended.
Despite the crumby predictive performance, the team of the players with the highest probabilities, FFR United, scored a handsome 55 points (and cost a £119m, see link below). In contrast, a side made up by a random 11, Random Wanderers, scored only 21 (£82m) and Moneybags City, the most expensive 11 players, scored only 46 points (£130m). I track the performance of these hypothetical teams each week. Take a look at the links below.
FFR Utd regularly beats the random team and has now beaten Moneybags City as often as not, i.e. it is a toss-up between these two teams in a typical week. This suggests that the information provided by the picking algorithm confers an advantage comparable to being able to pick the most expensive 11 each week (a feat beyond most budgets). I will explore this appraisal in coming posts.
As always, this week’s summaries are at:
http://fantasy-football-robot.appspot.com/teams?gw=15
and
http://fantasy-football-robot.appspot.com/appraise?gw=15
Fantasy Football Robot 